Windows Phone 7 now offers Visual Basic developer tools

In the Windows Team blog today, Brandon Watson announced that the "biggest request from the WP7 developer community" has been answered: the latest community preview of Windows Phone Developer Tools now includes support for Visual Basic.

Unfortunately, there is no word when this will be fully supported, and currently it stands as more of a proof of concept that it is a viable mobile development language. This is because there are a number of limitations involved: there is no "Go Live" license, so any apps that are put together in VB will not be able to be uploaded to the Windows Phone Marketplace; and developers can only make Silverlight apps and not XNA games.

This preview requires Visual Studio 2010 Professional or higher, and developers using Windows Phone Developer Tools Express edition will not be able to take part. However, the trial version of VS 2010 is enough to give it a try. Microsoft Visual Basic CTP for Windows Phone Developer Tools can be downloaded here.